THE ELECTION SPECTATOR:Keeping the Faith
Hynes, Patrick
T H E E L E C T I O N S P E C T A T O R Keeping the Faith Evangelicals remain wary of the Democrats’ overtures. by Patrick Hynes URING THE CLOSING WEEKS of the 2006 election, the...
...Right down to the life of the mother, Ritter’s is the cut-and-paste Republican position...
...F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 7 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 49...
...It stands to reason, therefore, that the GOP should move beyond its solid base of evangelical support by altering its appeal on those two issues...
...Their self-fulfilling prophecy had come to pass...
...Some Roman Catholic independents swung to the Democrats but as Pew points out, those that swung had a greater likelihood to skip Mass...
...The exit polls clearly show that the Democrats’ 48 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 7 P A T R I C K H Y N E S gains in 2006 came largely among non-Christian and secular voters,” reads a report from Pew titled, “Religion and the 2006 Elections...
...Narrowing ‘God gap’ raises eyebrows” sang another headline...
...Religious left voter mobilization groups—think MoveOn.org at prayer—distributed hundreds of thousands of flyers in states like Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Virginia during the election, and had no trouble drumming up media coverage while they were at it...
...Even before the last polls closed ABC News ran a story online under the headline, “Losing Faith in the GOP...
...Unfortunately for Republicans, that means that if a voter’s Sunday morning routine involves listening to George Stephanopoulos rather than Father John or Pastor Bob, he is increasingly more likely to vote Democrat...
...But, he points out, by making such a public display of their newfound desire to work with Americans of faith, Democrats may have assuaged some of those concerns among less religiously committed voters...
...More than a few successful Democratic candidates expressed right-ofcenter views on cultural issues on the campaign trail: Bob Casey in Pennsylvania, Heath Shuler in North Carolina, Bill Ritter in Colorado...
...Seventy-two percent of white evangelical Protestants voted for Republican candidates for Congress and 27 percent voted for Democratic candidates in 2006...
...For over a decade, Republicans have aggressively reached out to blacks, attending NAACP conventions, posing in photo-ops with black church leaders, and so forth...
...Amy Sullivan authored a cover story for the May 29 edition of the New Republic with the juicy subtitle, “The Christian Right Moves Left...
...In fact, it held even in the important races...
...Possibly...
...According to the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, evangelicals “gave strong support—about two-thirds or more— to Republican Senate candidates in several key states, including Tennessee, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Missouri, and Virginia...
...American churchgoers of all Christian denominations remain a reliable Republican voting bloc...
...White mainline Protestants and white Catholics who attend church at least once a week gave majorities of their support to Republican candidates...
...Evangelical Christians voted Republican in huge numbers again this cycle...
...It wasn’t just extravagant speeches at mega-churches that helped Democrats overcome voters’ doubts...
...As Beliefnet’s Waldman said to me, “There has been a sense that Democrats have been so beyond the pale on [values] issues that there was this obstacle to get many people to even consider voting for Democrats...
...Their flyers dismissed the “narrow agenda” of the religious right (abortion, gay marriage) and advocated a “broader” definition of “moral values...
...While GOP margins were down among these groups compared to the 2004 election, they were in line with GOP margins of support in 2000 and 2002, years in which the Republicans maintained and even strengthened their majorities on Capitol Hill...
...Indeed, Democrats saw their biggest gains among the 15 percent of the electorate that never attends church and the 25 percent who attend church “a few times a year...
...What is more, all the data suggests important subgroups of voters—religious or not—swung to the Democrats over issues such as the Iraq war and congressional corruption, not “religious right overreach” as an American correspondent for the Economist recently suggested...
...Jews swung in favor of Democrats by a whopping 25 percent over the same period...
...And it didn’t hurt that the Democrats actually allowed some of their culturally conservative candidates to flower this election cycle...
...Steve Waldman, editor of the nonpartisan webzine Beliefnet, argued in Slate that the religious left “is fruitful and has multiplied...
...Democrats saw double-digit gains in both these groups over their performance in 2002...
...In Missouri, for example, incumbent Republican Sen...
...In an interview conducted before he won the Democratic primary for governor, Ritter stated his position on abortion: “I am pro-life as a matter of personal faith...
...Moreover, while it is true that a significant portion of regular churchgoing Christians shifted their support toward the Democrats this election cycle, it appears they did so because the Democrats —not religious voters themselves—changed their ways...
...This would be a terrible mistake and would cost the GOP some important elements of its base...
...White Catholics who attend Mass weekly voted in favor of Republicans by a margin of 52 percent to 47 percent...
...Or had it...
...But here’s the thinly veiled secret: These publicized outreach efforts were never intended to win black votes...
...It is unlikely he would have had much of a career under previous recent Democratic Party special interest regimes...
...Those issues didn’t matter,” says Steve Waldman speaking about poverty and global warming...
...Patrick Hynes is the author of In Defense of the Religious Right (Nelson Current) and the proprietor of the blog Ankle Biting Pundits...
...It remains the case, as was true in 2004, that one of the most reliable predictors of a voter’s behavior on Election Day is his behavior on Sunday morning...
...by Patrick Hynes URING THE CLOSING WEEKS of the 2006 election, the mainstream media expected Democrats to win a larger share of the evangelical Christian vote than they did in 2004...
...T H E E L E C T I O N S P E C T A T O R Keeping the Faith Evangelicals remain wary of the Democrats’ overtures...
...The GOP’s relationship with Americans of faith may be its last remaining strength...
...A pre-election poll by Democratic strategists Stan Greenberg and James Carville showed that the number one doubt most Americans had about voting for the Democratic candidate in their district was that the candidate was “for abortion and gay marriage...
...Instead, Waldman believes many Democrats now “get it” with respect to the role traditional moral values play in elections...
...If Roe v. Wade is overturned, and the decision of whether or not to legalize abortions reverts to the states, and if the Colorado legislature passes a bill banning abortion, I will sign the bill only if it provides protections for women who are victims of rape or incest, or to protect the life of the mother...
...So what role should faith in public life have in the GOP’s comeback plans, if any at all...
...A late October Newsweek poll indicated only 60 percent of white evangelicals, “the cornerstone of the Republican base,” would support the Republican candidate in their district...
...And Democrats’ biggest gains came from non-Christians and secular voters...
...As paradoxical as that may sound, consider the GOP’s saga with black voters...
...In short, despite a slight swing in favor of Democrats, the GOP’s political base held...
...As you might expect, the media were almost unable to contain their glee upon seeing the Democrats win both houses of Congress, and with the help of some religious voters, to boot...
...Pundits credited aggressive Democratic entreaties on issues such as global warming and poverty with the putative surge in evangelicals who are willing to rethink their allegiance with the GOP...
...Kit Bond did in his 2004 re-election victory...
...The amateurish response would be to build some distance between the Republican Party and religious conservatives in the hopes of winning back some non-religious voters...
...Serious Democratic candidates broke their radio silence and began to advertise on Christian stations this cycle, an underrated campaign weapon Republicans have leveraged for years...
...Instead, they were designed to answer doubts among white moderate suburbanites about the GOP’s commitment to fairness and racial justice...
...A second, calmer look at last November’s results tells a different story...
...Because the GOP base held and less religiously committed voters, secularists, and non-Christians swung so heavily in favor of Democratic candidates, the “God gap” has actually widened over the past two years, not narrowed...
...Stories about Democratic Party outreach to evangelical Christians were omnipresent in the media...
...In 2004 those numbers were 75 percent and 24 percent, respectively...
...But for a slight bump in black voter support for Bush in 2004 (which may have been a historical anomaly), they have almost nothing to show for it...
...Jim Talent earned the same share of the white evangelical vote (74 percent) in his loss as Sen...
...SIMILAR DYNAMIC may be at play with the Democrats’ new faith push...
...Is there a connection between Democratic outreach efforts to white evangelicals and the boost given them by non-Christian and less religiously committed voters...
Vol. 40 • February 2007 • No. 1
